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SG: What was your, what was your home life like back then?

GK: Well, we had three kids, three kids, and I have to really admire my wife because she was, became the head nurse of the neonatal intensive care unit at the medical school at the time, and she pioneered the development of the nursery as it developed from a one or two nurse operation to a, twenty-four, thirty nurse operation later on. And of course, the new buildings were built, and she was always instrumental in designing the new buildings. But here, she's developing her own profession at the medical school and raising three kids at the same time. And these are the years when I'm on the road in Eastern Oregon or New York or someplace like that, and so she's doing all of these things. And she really made a name for herself so far as her nursing career is concerned. In fact, when they built the latest nursing, the ward for the premature babies, they named the nurse's quarters the Helen Katagiri Memorial Room, or they named the room after her, and her picture is on the wall today. So, but during the years, all the three sons were boys, and I guess I'm biased, but I enjoyed raising boys. And while they were growing up, I was working for the state mostly.

Well, when I was teaching school, they, I took advantage of all of the holidays. When we celebrated Thanksgiving at the elementary school, we made our pilgrim's hats and all those things. So I brought them home, and they were wearing pilgrim's hats and having a good time. When we recorded, made recordings, actually cut recordings at school, I brought home the machine, and we made recordings at home. So I took advantage of a lot of the activities that we were enjoying in school. When I was working for the state, I was invited quite often to the State of Alaska or to the State of Colorado to teach a course or to conduct in-service programs, and so we took the whole family to Alaska. And while I was teaching in Fairbanks, they were out there trying to kill as many mosquitoes as they could or watch the foxes run up and down the road right in front of the house. So I always tried to mix pleasure with my work, and it worked out. And we spent a summer in Colorado, and they played ball and rode horses. I should ask them how they felt about growing up because they had a good time. Oh, I took them to Boston. We drove to Boston, in fact, because I was invited to join one of the study groups to create an elementary science curriculum. So we drove all the way to Boston from Portland, and that was a long ride, and that was an experience. Boston is a different kind of community than Portland. We moved into this old house. We rented this old house which was supposed to be an all-electric house. And when we there, by the electric house, it means that you have an electric refrigerator and a stove with four burners which only three burners work, and that becomes an electric house, so we rented that. The house was, had to be over a hundred years old because the foundation was made up of boulders, and some boulders were three feet across and other boulders were two feet across, but that's what made up the foundation. And when you walk down the hallway in the second floor, you had all these doors on each side of the hallway. And when you walk down the hallway at night, it was spooky because you didn't know what was behind those hallways. And when we got there, there were all these bedrooms upstairs. So I thought, oh good, the boys could have their own bedrooms this summer because usually they're crammed into one or two bedrooms at home. Our house is small. And so they started out in different bedrooms. And when we saw them in the morning, they all were in one bedroom, the front of the house, and that's where they stayed for a full month.

And then the funniest thing happened. I went to work, to work with some professors and teachers at a school and the family stayed home. And when I got home, my middle son was fighting with a neighborhood kid, and my middle son was sitting on top of this other kid. So all I said was, "Hi boys," and walked into the house. I guess the neighborhood kids had to find out who's boss around here. And they were a novelty because I don't think the neighborhood kids had ever seen an Asian before. And, but they figured out their pecking order, and everything went fine for the rest of the summer. But there was a second family from Portland, and they came over to see us one day, and they have three kids. And so when they got out of the car, the neighborhood kids saw this other family from Oregon, and they were saying, "How come they don't have black hair?" They had gotten the impression that everyone from Oregon had black hair. But this is the kind of experiences they had. We had a delightful time in Boston for months, six weeks and the Freedom Trail and all the historical places in downtown Boston. So there were a lot of advantages. We had a lot of good times with the boys growing up.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.